Witi Ihimaera - Uncle's Story

Hempel blanched and looked as if he was going to be sick.

‘I could tell you that you are doing this as your duty to country and to democracy,’ Sam continued. ‘I will remind you that you are professional soldiers. Neither of those will make killing a man, which is your profession, easy. But he’s not only a man. He’s the enemy. It’s either him or you. And he’s thinking that way too. If you want to live, and want your mates to live, pull the trigger. As for the rest, living with our conscience, call it what you will, we all have our own ways of dealing with that.’

‘What’s yours, Sarge?’ Quincey asked.

Quincey was quivering. Racked up.

What do I do? Sam thought. Shall I tell him? Instead:

‘My advice is for you to remember your training and your rifle drills. Let the procedures take over. Let the rifle do the killing.’

Four o’clock. Sam laid down the ambush. George and Red Fleming were at the top end of the track where the enemy was likely to enter. The rest took up positions overlooking the track. Deliberately, Sam placed Brooks and Quincey as far from the killing area as he could. God willing, if there was any killing to be done this day it would already be done before they were forced to pull the trigger.

Once the ambush was set, Sam primed it. Now it was all a matter of waiting. Of maintaining vigilance and staying so quiet and still that disrupted Nature reasserted itself. So the monkeys skittered and chattered again, the insects chirped and the birds whistled and sang. Somehow, you had to manage absolute stillness, so that snakes, no matter how poisonous, slithered undisturbed across your neck, their weight of coldness and dry scales feathering over your skin.

The sun was spinning in the sky. Suddenly, the birds stopped singing. George signalled.

Charlie’s in the area. Stand to.

Somebody was coming along the track. The tension was like a tightly coiled spring. George signalled again:

No, not Charlie.

An old village woman and her daughter came walking through the sunlight. They passed the hidden infantrymen, entered the cemetery and went to pray at a small shrine. When they returned back past the section, the girl was crying. The woman’s face was enigmatic, as if death was merely part of the passage of life.

The jungle stilled again.

An hour later, the sun was burning a hole in the sky. Sweat was pouring into Sam’s eyes, stinging them with salt. For a moment he lost his concentration, trying to clear his vision. That’s when he sensed that something had changed.

He watched. He listened. Insects were chirping. A small frog: toc toc toc. But the frog was out . There should have been a pause between the second and third toc. There wasn’t.

Coming down the track, not more than 70 metres away, was the enemy. George and Red Fleming must have given the thumbs-down signal, and Sam had missed it. Two men with AK47s at ready. Was that it? No, wait, wait, Sam thought. Steady your nerves. Don’t spring the trap yet.

Now they had passed Sam, so close he could almost sniff their sweat. Couldn’t they smell him?

Wait, wait . Three more enemy were coming in dispersed formation. Where were the first two? Level with Manderson and Johanssen. Don’t get trigger-happy, guys.

Wait . Another two Vietcong. Level with George. Would there be any more? Would there? If he left it too late, the first two enemy would be outside the killing ground. Or Brooks and Quincey would be forced to kill.

Make the decision, Sam. Make it. Make it now.

The contact drills took over.

Sam raised the SRL to his shoulder, his right elbow went up, the left hand gripped the woodwork, the thumb slipped off the safety catch, the foresight moved into the centre of the rear sight and then moved up through the centre of the visible mass.

First pressure, squeeze off, follow through.

The SLR kicked. A loud detonation, and Sam could almost see the bullet hurtling towards its target.

The bullet struck. Pierced the cranium, splintered the bone, made a hole. Out came a spurt of rich red blood. The Vietcong soldier crumpled and fell. Did he have time to utter a word? Perhaps a small oh of surprise? A moment to think of family, of wife, of children before the terrible pain and collapse into death?

No time to think of that now. Manderson and Johanssen’s machine-gun had caught three of the enemy and cut them in two. The rifle group was also active, the deep slow dunk dunk dunk of automatic weapons was close by. Sam saw another enemy go down. Shot in the throat, coughing and gurgling and watching the blood pour out.

But this was too easy. It couldn’t be this easy. It never was.

Christ! Another five enemy were coming down the track. Unleashing shots. Screaming. Shouting. George lobbed a grenade. It looked so ordinary, turning in the air. Boom. The Vietcong were retreating, George and Red Fleming in pursuit. Dunk, dunk, dunk . After a few minutes, they re-emerged on the track and took up a defensive position.

All clear , George signalled.

The section moved onto the track. Already Turei and Mandy Manderson were going through the enemy dead searching them for information. Quincey was vomiting his breakfast. Fox was green around the gills.

Quincey , Sam signed, mop up.

Best to take Quincey’s mind off the killings and get him back on the job. Best to get him handling the dead bodies. The more he looked into the face of Death, the sooner he’d get used to it.

Manderson showed Sam the pickings from the dead. Grenades, packs containing a large quantity of detonators, and documents which indicated that the enemy soldiers were the D440 local battalion.

No map of the enemy base? Sam signed.

No, but one of the dead soldiers is wearing the badge of their 274 regiment.

274 — one of the professional CVC units.

Sam nodded. They’d already been here too long. Time to get out:

Back to base .

Quickly, George led the section out of the area. Turei took Hempel, Brooks and Quincey under his protective wing. Quincey was tear-streaked.

‘Oh, sweet Jesus, oh —’

Back at the base, Sam saw that he had blood on his fatigues and on his skin. He whimpered, scrubbing at it, tearing his skin raw. That night the jungle was loud around him, filled with voices, and he curled himself into a ball, trying to protect himself from their accusations. People always said that with your first kill something died within you. Perhaps in the taking of life, watching it depart from a man who was once living, you also gave everything that was your own innocence.

How do you forgive yourself, Sarge? Hempel had asked.

Sam hadn’t answered, because he had never killed a man either.

Yes, best to think of the rifle, not yourself, doing the killing.

Day Two

The next morning reports came in that the Americans were still pinned down. A number had been killed and many more wounded.

‘Let’s concentrate on our job,’ Captain Fellowes said. ‘The best way we can help the Yanks is to find the enemy — and fast — and force their withdrawal. We knew that 275 and 33 were in the area but we didn’t know about 274. They’ll put up a fight.’

During the night the strategists had considered the evidence of the patrols. No signs of enemy activity or contact had been reported by patrols in the south and east quadrants. Some enemy activity had been found in the far west — but most activity had been reported by Lieutenant Haapu in the north-west quadrant and Sam had been the only one reporting an actual enemy engagement.

Captain Fellowes stabbed the map with a finger:

‘Looks like the north-west has the action. Let’s get back there and find the enemy before they find us.’